Monitoring and recognition of user activities using home appliances can be realized by a smart-home, and more generally, IoT (Internet of Things) initiatives.
Some home appliances are equipped with a communication means for making a wireless or wired Internet connection to notify statuses thereof in real-time, and can provide a means for inferring the user activities. An example of such a system is proposed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-92767. However, this proposed system requires each of the home appliances to be equipped with the communication means for making the wireless or wired Internet connection via a home terminal.
As a result, according to this proposed system, the cost of the home appliance equipped with the communication means increases, because of the need to exclusively design and manufacture the home appliance to be equipped with the communication means. In addition, it may be difficult and troublesome for the user to set up the home appliance equipped with the communication means, particularly in a case in which the wired Internet connection is required via the home terminal. Furthermore, it may be difficult to suppress the power consumption of the home terminal since the home terminal constantly monitors the statuses of the home appliance.